﻿Replication of “The Effect of Electoral Systems on Voter Turnout: Evidence from Spain” (Carlos Sanz), Political Science Research and Methods, 2015.
  


* Description: I exploit the unique institutional framework of Spanish local elections, where municipalities
follow different electoral systems depending on their population size, as mandated by a national
law. Using a regression discontinuity design, I compare turnout under closed list proportional
representation and under an open list, plurality-at-large system where voters can vote for
individual candidates from the same or different party lists. I nd that the open list system
increases turnout by between one and two percentage points. The results suggest that open list
systems, which introduce competition both across and within parties, are conducive to more
voter turnout.

* Files included in this package

- ReadMe.txt (this file)
- sanz_psrm.do (Stata do file)
- sanz_psrm.dta (Stata data file)
- sanz_psrm.txt (Stata log file)

* Program: Stata Version 12.0
* Additional program required: Please install “rdrobust” <https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/rdrobust/implementation-in-stata> by writing the the following command in the Stata command line: “net install rdrobust, from(http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cattaneo/software/rdrobust/stata) replace". The results of this paper are based on the most update version of this package as of April 23, 2015.

* sanz_psrm.dta is a small subset of the elections results data publicly available at "http://www.infoelectoral.mir.es/min/".
* Process of Replication:
	
(1) Place the do file (sanz_psrm.do) and data file (sanz_psrm.dta) in the same folder.
	
(2) Run sanz_psrm.do.


* Most Recent Date of Successful Replication: April 24, 2015
* Data Description 

Contains data from sanz_psrm.dta
  obs:        72,811                          
 vars:            25                          24 Apr 2015 11:33
 size:    14,270,956                          
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              storage  display     value
variable name   type   format      label      variable label
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
id              float  %9.0g                  municipality code
year            float  %9.0g                  
municipality    str100 %100s                  
population      float  %9.0g                  
census          float  %9.0g                  
nota            float  %9.0g                  blank votes
null            float  %9.0g                  spoilt votes
candidates      float  %9.0g                  votes for candidates
g_population    float  %9.0g                  population in subsequent Congress-election year
g_census        float  %9.0g                  census in subsequent Congress-election year
g_nota          float  %9.0g                  blank votes in subsequent Congress elections
g_null          float  %9.0g                  spoilt votes in subsequent Congress elections
g_candidates    float  %9.0g                  votes for candidates in subsequent Congress elections
turnout         float  %9.0g                  voter turnout
g_turnout       float  %9.0g                  voter turnout in subsequent Congress elections
p_turnout       float  %9.0g                  percent of voter turnout
g_p_turnout     float  %9.0g                  percent of voter turnout in subsequent Congress elections
p_nota          float  %9.0g                  percent of blank votes
g_p_nota        float  %9.0g                  percent of blank votes in subsequent Congress elections
p_null          float  %9.0g                  percent of spoilt votes
g_p_null        float  %9.0g                  percent of spoilt votes in subsequent Congress elections
lists           float  %9.0g                  number of party-lists
g_votes_pp      float  %9.0g                  votes for the PP party in subsequent Congress elections
g_votes_psoe    float  %9.0g                  votes for the PSOE party in subsequent Congress elections
g_votes_iu      float  %9.0g                  votes for the IU party in subsequent Congress elections
